Structure of youth monitoring

Youth monitoring has been established for the purpose of introducing a knowledge-based youth policy. In order to keep and develop our young people, we must know what they need. What is the situation of young people compared to other members of the society? What issues and challenges do our young people have to face? Better knowledge of young people is one of the youth policy and youth work cornerstones, which directly influences the decision-making mechanism.

Youth monitoring provides consistent updated information about various fields related to the lives of young people by enabling to make assessments about the situation of the youth, take the aspects concerning young people into account in developing different policies and evaluate the potential effects of policy changes.

Youth monitoring consists of various inter-related components:

Indicators, which reflect the more significant aspects of the lives of young people, and which are consistently collected and updated;

A database of studies, which are related to the lives of young people and carried out in Estonia;

Development studies of youth policy.

Hereby, at the request of the Estonian Youth Work Centre, Praxis Centre for Policy Studies is continuing the development and implementation of a comprehensive monitoring system of the lives of young people, which was initiated by the Estonian Youth Institute. The project is supported via the state programme “Development of the Quality of Youth Work” initiated by the Youth Department of the Ministry of Education and Research and carried out by the Estonian Youth Work Centre.